We offer an opportunity for a motivated graduate student to join our team and develop a dissertation project within the context of a larger, funded research project.
The graduate program in the Faculty of Engineering is new and its upcoming PhD in Engineering will offer flexibility that no other program in the country provides. We will develop your program based on your individual interests and needs. This means that we can make full use of the interdisciplinary breadth of UGA’s Faculty of Engineering (with members from education, social sciences and art) in assembling your committee and choosing your course work.
Possible thesis topic: Synergistic learning for complex engineering futures
This graduate research opportunity is part of an NSF-funded project that aims at building a fundamental theory of synergistic learning in engineering while pushing the boundaries of integrative pedagogies through an interdisciplinary Synthesis and Design Studio.
The objective of this dissertation is to research synergistic learning in the context of the Studio and develop a fundamental understanding of the influences, mechanisms and outcomes of such learning processes.
According to their interest, students will develop a particular lens of inquiry (e.g. interdisciplinarity, identity formation, creativity) to guide their research effort.
Contact address : Joachim Walther,jwalther@engr.uga.edu
Driftmier Engineering Center
University of Georgia
Athens, GA, USA
Future engineering work will be complex with novel challenges that concern aspects of sustainability as well as social and ethical aspects of engineering work. To better prepare students to face these socio-technical problems we must move beyond fragmented approaches to engineering education towards holistic conceptions of integrated engineering learning. While there are a range of approaches that address the integration of engineering curricula (e.g. capstone design or freshmen engineering programs) we know relatively little about the ways in which students make connections between disparate aspects of their learning – we call this synergistic learning.
Closing Date: Contact Employer (Joachim Walther)
Closing Date: Contact Employer (Joachim Walther)
